Spanda Karikas

We laud that Sankara by whose mere opening and shutting of the eye-lids there is the appearance and dissolution of the world and who is the source of the glorious powers of the collective whole of the saktis (the divine energy in various forms).

Benefits:

• •Verse 1's invocation ("yasyonmesanimesabhyam...") is the opening line of the whole text, read with Siva Sutras' "udyamo bhairavah" as the twin foundation of Spanda philosophy
• •Verses 12-16 give the system's fullest direct refutation of the Buddhist Madhyamika void doctrine, on the grounds that even the experience of a void requires an experient
• •Verses 22-25 describe how intense emotional states (rage, joy, panic) can themselves become, for an alert yogi, a sudden door onto the Spanda principle

Resorting to that power (of Spanda-tattva), the divinities, Mantra etc. together with the sacred formulae which serve as their indicators, being endowed with the power of omniscience proceed to carry out their assigned functions towards the embodied ones just as the senses of the embodied ones by resorting to the power of Spanda proceed to carry out their (specific) functions.

Benefits:

• •Gives the clearest single-line formula in the whole text for "the world is nothing but Siva" (verse 4)
• •Verses 6-7 redefine three major religious aspirations - the deity manifesting in meditation, the elixir of immortality, and formal initiation - as all being this one realization
• •Closes with a remark rare in this literature: Kshemaraja explicitly declines to devalue ordinary sacerdotal initiation even while placing this inner one above it

As the sustainer of this universe (i.e. Siva) when eagerly entreated with desire accomplishes all the desires abiding in the heart of the embodied yogi who is awake after causing the rise of the moon and the sun.

Benefits:

• •Gives the text's clearest working definition of unmesa (verse 9) - the sudden rise of another awareness in a mind fully engrossed in one thought
• •Directly addresses a question every practitioner eventually asks: supernormal experiences of light, sound and taste (verse 10) are named explicitly as distractions, not the goal
• •The 13-verse arc on bondage (13-18) gives the system's fullest technical account of how the puryastaka and the power of words actually bind the empirical individual

I pay my homage to that wonderful speech of my guru which is like a boat for crossing the fathomless ocean of doubt and is full of words which yield wonderful meaning (in the case of the guru). I offer my reverential prayer to Spanda in the form of para vak, the Supreme divine I-consciousness which is full of wonderful transcendental bliss, and which acts like a boat in crossing the fathomless ocean of doubt regarding my essential nature (in the case of Spanda in the form of paravak).

Benefits:

• •The closing verse is a genuine double entendre, in the number-letters tradition of classical Sanskrit poetry - read one way it praises the human guru's speech, read the other way it praises Spanda itself as para vak, the Supreme Word
• •Confirms, in Ksemaraja's own closing remarks, the tradition that Vasugupta received this teaching on a rock surface, in a dream, as the essence of Siva's own instruction
• •Closes the entire ~52-53 verse text with an explicit statement that its benefit belongs to "sarvalokasya" - all people, not a restricted circle